Vigils for India gang-rape victim

29 December 2013 7:26 AM

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Updated: 17:51, Sunday December 29, 2013

India is marking 12 months since the death of a student savagely gang-raped on a Delhi bus with candle-light vigils and prayers.

The 23-year-old physiotherapy student died on December 29 last year, nearly two weeks after being brutally attacked by a gang of six men on a moving bus as she returned home from the cinema with a male companion.

The attack and her subsequent death shook the country, shone a global spotlight on India's treatment of women and unleashed seething public anger about sexual violence and harassment of women.

The victim's family will hold a religious ceremony in their ancestral village in northern Uttar Pradesh state, away from the constant media attention they have faced since the attack, her brother said.

'We want to remember her in a quiet way, away from all the glare. We want it to be a private, family moment,' the brother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told AFP.

The family will follow traditional Hindu rituals on Sunday, with a prayer ceremony and symbolic offerings made to their ancestors, which are believed to bring peace to those who have died.

The student, who was repeatedly assaulted with an iron rod during her ordeal, has been praised for her determination to report her attackers to the police before she died of her injuries.

Four of her attackers were convicted and given the death penalty in September after the case was fast-tracked, while a juvenile was sentenced to a detention centre.

The angry and sometimes violent protests against the attack jolted India's parliament, which this year passed tougher laws against rapists and other sex-crime offenders.

Despite the reforms, new cases of rape continue to be reported daily from across the country in the Indian press.

In the capital on Sunday, scores of students, professionals and others were slated to gather at Jantar Mantar, a protest site in the city's centre, where a makeshift memorial has been set up for the victim.

Small lamps, candles and flowers will be placed around the memorial before a peaceful vigil in the evening, one of several expected to take place across the city.

One of the organisers said women who turn up at Jantar Mantar will be encouraged to share their own experiences of violence and discuss societal changes that have taken place since the student's death.